Hearing protectors are often employed in noisy environments, such as factories, airports etc. Such hearing protectors consist of two muffs or hoods manufactured from hard material, for example plastic, which sealingly surround the ears of the wearer and which are connected to one another by the intermediary of a headband. Interiorly in the muffs or hoods, there is provided as a rule a porous noise absorbent agent. The employment of hearing protectors has increased at the same rate as awareness has grown of the risks of loss of hearing caused by noise, and developments are constantly being made of the hearing protectors which occur on the market in order to make them more user-friendly, so that the desired level of use is encouraged. The majority of hearing protectors utilise so-called passive damping, i.e. a damping that takes place with the aid of the material included in the muffs or hoods and noise absorbent agents disposed in them.
A remaining problem in the employment of hearing protectors is that there is often a need to listen to requisite sound, such as instructions, or other conversations from a person in the vicinity, at the same time as the intention is to impede as much background noise as possible.
Hearing protectors occur on the market which, in response to the level, damp noise above a certain sound level. In this level-dependent damping, the hearing protector allows the passage of all sound up to a pre-determined sound level, with the aid of a microphone, an amplifier and a loudspeaker disposed inside the hearing muff or hood. When this level is exceeded, the electronics are shut off and all sound is damped by passive damping.
There also occur different types of communication systems in connection with hearing protection. For example, all people in factory premises may be provided with hearing protection which includes a radio receiver. The radio transmissions that can be received are often standard radio channels, but may also include or consist of a local transmission at the company in question. By such means, centrally transmitted instructions, alerts and other information are received as a one-way communication, but the system does not satisfy the need for communication between the individual recipients.
A problem common to existing hearing protectors is that they are not used in those cases where they are experienced as being inconvenient to use. Instead, there is a tendency that the user quite simply removes the hearing protector when s/he wishes to talk to someone else, for example to receive instructions or the like. Thereafter, there is a major risk that the wearer forgets to replace the hearing protector, with a consequential increase in the risk of loss of hearing through noise.